Wheeling Sunday register. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1882-1934, 1887-09-04
VOLS.25.
NEWS AND COMMENT.
WHEELING AND THE PENNsYL-
NANIA.

An enormous debt, variously estimated
at from $4,000, 600 to SIS, 5,OOO, 600, bad
policy, too many irons in the ire and con-
seauent threatened bankruptcy has COM
PEELED "BoB" GARRETT TO sell his great
Baltimore and Ohio property to powerful
syndicate Of English and American eapi-
talists, or, technically speaking, this syn
dicate agrees to float ten millions of the 3.
so. debt with the provisO that the road
be placed in competent hands, ''satis-
factory to the syndicate" What
interests Wheeling is whether or not the
hands are the hands of the Pennsylys-
MA. The heads of the syndicate, the
DRKNEIs, are prominently connected with
the finances of the Pennsylvania road. The
purchasing contract provides for the aban-
donment of the work on the B. & 0.'s New
York connections and Staten Island track,
and the terms of the whole affair show that
the road is certainly to be dominated by
its great rival, the Pennsylvania. These
are the facts of the case. 1t is generally
believed that the Vice President of the
Pennsylvania, CAssAT, is to be GARRETT's
successor.
So far as rates are concerned the Balti-
more and Ohio and the Pennsylvania will
probably be one road-one gigantic mo-
nopoly, dominated by the syndicate and
the Pennsylvania who are to pull together
as the terms of the purchase show.
This is, to Us, the vital point.
As Wheeling is now provided in the
matter of shipping facilities, with the river
either dried up or blocked. with ice, on an
average over half the year, the city
would practically be at the mercy
Of this monopoly, her nail, glass
and pottery shippers would have to pay
the rate asked and could 90 to no other
shop, for the simple reason that there
would be none other TO 20 to. To be sure,
under the provisions Of the Interstate
Commerce law Wheeling could not be dis
eliminated against in the matter of rates,
bat the all-impOrtant fact remains that
she would be deprived Of that great boom
to a manufacturing city-railrOad cOmpe-
tition aud the consequent keeping Of
shipping rates down to the lowest notch.
Wheeling has it in her power to still he
independent of any one railroad.
Over the river are half dozen roads,
among them the Cleveland, LOrain and
Wheeling, a part OF the Vanderbilt system,
the Wheeling and Lake Erie, portion Of
the Wabash, and tine Mt. Vernon, COshOc-
ton and Wheeling, part OF the Garrison
lines, all waiting for a means OF entering
Wheeling-the c., L. * w. having reached
Bridgeport and the W. x L. Z. on the way
to Martins Ferry.
What is known rs the Union bridge,
which was t0 he this means of entrance TO
Wheeling, hes been nprGiected, surveyed and
the building OF il started by two or three
corporations who wished to hold their
charters, Uut lulS WIS AL. lSaLS u0'0
passed aud the roads are still little better
than no thoroughfareS, when they should
be adding to Wheehng's prosperity by
bringing trade and people here from the
West. There has been no immediate or
pressing need OF the Union bridge, only the
general need OF more railroads and conse.
queutly the projectors got no further in
their work than putting it on paper. But
the practical absorption Of the B.
& .. by the Pennsylvania Company
leaving Wheeling without railroad
competition and at the mercy Of the Penn
sylvania company presents a reason urgent
and pressing, why the Union bridge at
Martins Ferry that Is to bring these com
petiug roads into Wheeling should be built
and quickly. Wheeling cannot afford to
be without competing railroads.
Bui!d the Union bridge and the big
Uuion depot
What a boom it would give old Wheel
in,